Madness
by JupiterDelphinus
Summary: She had always thought the room was too big. "It's befitting of your stature," is what they told her; but there, sitting atop a throne that could fit two of her, in a room bigger than any she'd seen before her ascension, she didn't feel anything except small and insignificant. Sugarless Gum. AU
1. Chapter 1

1

She had always thought the room was too big. _"It's befitting of your stature,"_ is what they told her; but there, sitting atop a throne that could fit two of her, in a room bigger than any she'd seen before her ascension, she didn't feel anything except small and insignificant. The room was airy and well lit, decorated with the symbol of the freedom she had given to the people on long, blue, billowing streamers adorning the archways of the columned walls. Light filtered brightly through, casting the room in a peaceful hue for every hour of the day.

"_A more subtle reminder of the tyranny you so graciously conquered, and of the peace you are bringing."_ The contrast of the color of the room and of her own pallor did nothing more than to make her discomfort even greater, and her place in this new world she'd created even more uncomfortable. She knew, above all else, that she didn't belong where she was. The power, the confinement, the responsibility, none of these things sat well with the beloved ruler. She stayed for the good of the people, hoping deep within that she knew what that good was.

The door opened silently and a small man dressed to the nines in the finest clothes his absorbent salary could buy began scuttling down the expansive hall. As the man, her royal advisor, made his way across the great length, particularly so for a man with such a small foot fall, she couldn't help but think of what an utter waste of space the room was. _"It will be good for your image, for the people to see you in such a room," _but she'd never seen an ordinary citizen in the room in all of her rule yet, no matter how brief an amount of time had accrued under her title. She could hear tiny footfalls echo off the tall ceiling.

As the man finally neared the steps leading up to throne upon which she sat, he knelt quickly before rising, and addressing her. "Highness you should not sit like that upon your throne, it isn't befitting one of such rank," he lightly chastised. She sighed once, her breath filling the empty space of the hall, before adjusting her position from lounging horizontally across the damned thing, legs dangling over the right arm rest, to sitting straight up, feet on the ground, forward and away from the back. She raised one eyebrow in question as if to ask, _'Are you happy now?' _but only received the other all-too-familiar reprimand of "And really, Majesty, why do you insist on wearing such commonplace clothes? Surely a flowing gown would be more suited to your role as Queen and Liberator."

Again, she sighed. "If I've told you one, I've told you a thousand times, Mr. Butler, these clothes are perfectly suited to my station. Do you think I fought and conquered in dresses and flowing gowns?" She paused, and as the persnickety man began to answer, she held up a hand for silence, not keen at all upon hearing another lecture, and he cut himself off before he began. A heaviness fell over the two. "What was the verdict, Mr. Butler? Did the council reach unanimity?"

He looked up at her through his spectacles, tugging the collar of his blue tailcoat. "Yes, Majesty," came the short reply.

She waited for him to continue for a moment before rolling her eyes. "Well? What was it? Did you think I asked of such an answer to be completely unanimous only to be denied that same answer by a man who fears to be the bringer of bad news?" She gripped the armrests of her throne impatiently, her eyes flashing a myriad of colors before settling on red. "Tell me now, Peppermint Man, or you'll see exactly how I overthrew the old regime."

He gave a small squeak, cleared his through once, forcing his voice to return to its normal octave from high-pitched fear, and spoke delicately. "Majesty…Highness…we all thought it best if she…if she would be…put down, so to speak."

Her grip on the throne relaxed as she began to get her answer. She eyed the man twiddling before her warily. She knew from her short relationship that he had an affinity for twisting meanings and words, giving half-truths and politicians reasons to things she wished were told blunt and to the point. His choice of words led her to believe the worst, which is what she had been expecting all along. As her emotions twisted inside, her eyes drew fast rainbows, before landing on peaceful blue. "What do you mean, 'put down'?" She asked grimly.

He cleared his throat again. "Surely, Her Majesty has to understand that what with the most recent attack to befall the Greater Kingdom, such a threat has to be eliminated. Exile, while more marketable, has been far from successful in keeping your people free from her continued madness. While we may not understand your affection for her, we do understand that you've had enough killing. But, as the case may be, we can no longer do anything except err on the side of caution. The last show of aggression on the outer reaches of your kingdom caused untold horror, destruction, and cost many of your citizens their lives.

"I cannot begin to count how many times you've had to send out the Captain of the Guard to take care of issues she has caused, and you've not been reigning for even a year! It is time at last, we've all agreed, to put an end to her insanity, and her existence. Sirs Finn and Jake will certainly take up the task and have it done in a timely and humane fashion."

She stared out the nearest window, gazing through the light fabric boasting her coat of arms and out to the sunny day on the other side of the imprisoning glass. Silence befell the room as she contemplated with finality the news she had just heard. Turning to him with all the grace and wisdom she possessed, she said, "No. I will complete this task myself, and have no arguments on the matter. You are dismissed."

Not daring to defy his sovereign, her advisor gave a low bow before scurrying his was out of the room, leaving her alone to mull over her thoughts.

* * *

The castle was painfully stereotypical, and she couldn't help but laugh a bit to herself. Tall, angry spires pierced the night sky, and lightning crashed melodramatically, casting shifting shadows in peculiar shapes along the beaten and weeded cobblestone square. A blackened tree, dead from who knows what, twisted and grew in disfigured shapes all too similar to hands reaching out and faces screaming for mercy. Vines and brambles scattered and littered the courtyard, and ruined steps led to a great wooden door hanging off of its old iron hinges.

The door howled as she opened it, entering into a long-abandoned entrance hall that held the ghosts of a once great family. Suits of armor, shattered vases, and torn tapestries and portraits adorned every cob-webbed and dusty hall as she made her way to the place she'd find her reason for being in such a place. As she rounded a corner, she saw the faintest of glows emanating from a door only slightly cracked. She opened it, and found a stone stairwell leading to the basement, as she had expected.

Descending in her own pace, steely resolve the dominant emotion on her face, she grew closer and closer to the lair where she'd find her target. Metallic sounds and sparking noised jumped of the walls around her and up the narrow way she'd come from. Incomprehensible mumblings followed the shattering of glass and the boiling of liquids before she reached an old wooden door and pushed it open, revealing the basement to her well-worn eyes. The woman there immediately looked up from her work, the door clicking against the wall as it opened fully drawing her attention. "Marceline. You've come home."


	2. Chapter 2

2

She almost had to laugh at the sight before her; for here stood a once-renowned Princess looking every inch the Mad Scientist of ancient horror stories and crazed minds. Lab coat splattered with greens and blues and reds in no discernible pattern and with all the age of every experiment ever attempted seared into its fabric. Hair in a mussed and disheveled bun with wiry columns of strays adorning a face riddled with lack of sleep and mind. Her eyes lay crazed and cold just under grimy goggles which rested upon a smoked out forehead. Beads of sweat and droplets of steam glistened freely on unwashed skin.

She could see the unwound mind of a woman obsessed with life and perfection of that life. A pure scientist rotted away to the very core by power and desire and need for absolutes and nothing less. She couldn't laugh. A great mind lay dormant in there somewhere, perhaps not all lost, waiting to reaffirm its grip on reality and on the severity of the things it had been part of. Perhaps all was needed to attain once more the girl lost in the science and the insanity was a wake-up call. Maybe Bubblegum just needed to realize somehow the things she had done.

All these thoughts and a thousand more rushed through Marceline's mind in less than the blink of an eye as she gave a curt, "This isn't my home." No, this abandoned, musty, dampened and desolate place was not her home, nor had it ever been. The home she remembered was not at all the pitiful decayed memory of the palace that she had seen on her trek down to the room she now found herself in. The home she remembered wasn't the girl who stood before her and drew close even now, ignoring her curt response.

"How have you been holding up? Are the sinews holding strong? How's your fine motor function? Have you been playing the bass? Are you feeling the sunlight affecting you in any way? Vision, hearing, shape-shifting all fine?" She plowed through the questions quickly and with great interest, poking and prodding at bits of Marceline. A shoulder here, an elbow there. Wiggle your fingers. Look into the light. Stretch your arms.

Marceline gave her due diligence on automatic. "Fine. Yes. Fine. No. No. Yes." She raised her arms and stretched and stared all the same as Bubblegum soon ended her brief and thorough examination, apparently convinced of her stability. The former princess nodded her head once, and pulled out an old journal, opening it to one of the back pages, and scribbling rapid notes down into it obsessively. Marceline looked on, remembering a time when notes were taken casually through conversation, and with less interest in research and more interest in the subject.

The Queen sighed as she watched the Scientist snap the book shut and level her gaze. "You haven't been playing the bass?" she asked, a shifting shadow of the care she had once shown for the vampire girl.

Marceline straightened her back defiantly. "They tell me it's not proper for a royal to play an instrument like that; they suggested a piano or the violin instead. I'd have none of it, so now I play only when I have total privacy lest I be reprimanded heavily. I never have absolute privacy, so I don't play." Bubblegum studied her levelly, and Marceline looked right back into lost eyes, unwilling as ever to submit to a battle she didn't even know she had been fighting.

A smile tinged the pink girls' lips ever-so-crookedly; a snake in the grass simply waiting to strike, to see Marceline break form. "They?" she asked, and the vampire queen could all but feel the color in her eyes shifting around angrily, confusedly, joyfully, before settling to neutral once more. She hated the look on her counterpart's face, the look of a battle already won, of an enemy already conquered. She couldn't remember the exact moment their feud over stature and dominance had begun; perhaps it had been ever-present from the start, but it raged on in undertones and sly words.

"My royal advisors," she began, "they seem to prefer a more traditional Queen. Someone perhaps more lady-like." Bubblegum's face split into a wide grin of triumph for a quick moment. "I then went on to mention what happened to the last ruler who was so confined to such regulations, and they quickly changed their tune and allowed me my pants and tunics." She felt her eyes shift again, and knew they had to be sparkling a deep rich gold judging by the hardly-contained look of rage adorning the princess' face. This was a dangerous dance, a chess game that could have no winner. Marceline knew that, having returned for one last time to eliminate the other player. Immediately her eyes fell to pale blue.

Bubblegum visibly noticed the shift, and moved to clean her work space, creating a mess instead on the surrounding book shelves, tossing liquids into a glowing green vat of left-over potion or concoction. She pulled back a curtain in the far corner revealing a large lamp with a strong flame, releasing the room from its darkness and showing the cluttered mess less maniacal and more the consequence of a scattered brain. In fact, the room didn't look much different from how Marceline remembered it. Food leftovers tattered and scribbled pages of notes, spills from coffee, from mixes, from this and from that were tossed and decorated the room haphazardly. Even the girl herself didn't look so different; the curious passion in her eye replaced by crazed obsession ‒ something perhaps only Marceline would have noticed.

The lamp didn't make any burning sounds, and the silence hung heavily in the air. The vampire stared at the directionless fidgeting of Bubblegum. The whole situation felt unnatural‒she shouldn't be here, shouldn't have to do this. Things shouldn't have gone the way they had, and that damn lamp should smell of burning oils and should sound like snapping fire. When it got right down to it, Marceline herself shouldn't even be where she was; she should be dead, and Bubblegum should be tinkering away on some harmless project. Nothing was right. Nothing would be right again, she figured.

When Bubblegum finally asked the question, her mind ran wild with memories of happier times. Of times filled with strawberries and sugar. Of improvement and joy and sunshine for the first time. The question crushed what was left of her resolve to forget, to move on and never think of what was.

"Why are you here, Marceline?"


	3. Chapter 3

3

Princess Bubblegum could remember the exact moment when her life changed. Well, she thought she could remember, but her mind had long since been addled; her once well-honed clarity becoming a thing to fear, to hate, to shy away from. Or was it? There were times when her mind seemed the clearest it ever had, the science shone through with purposeful strides and revealing shadows. Yet perhaps again those were when her mind was its most lost. Had she ever truly divulged fully into pure scientist? Had she ever quite lost that humanity that caused her projects to soar? Besides, besides…she wasn't human after all and humanity was for humans so why should she bind herself to such perfunctory uselessness? Uselessness…data, data, data. Knowledge. That's what was important to her now. What always had been important. Knowledge?

Still, every time that pale, pale skin and that ebony black twisting shadow silk head of hair found her again she could remember the very, very moment. To the instant. And every time that slinking vine-like thin agile lithe, lithe frame swam its way into her vision, her mind weighted itself with guilt and pride and love and hate and joy and sorrow and contradictions, contradictions, contradictions. She had nothing to be guilty about and everything to be guilty about. And when those long narrow strong thin deft, deft fingers twiddled anxiously oh so nervously for confrontation and conversation with someone lost and found and seeking oh so long ago, Bubblegum could vividly, vividly remember those deft, deft fingers doing such wickedly delicious things before, before, before.

And when that quiet raspy smooth dusty ancient young seductive, seductive voice whispered out into the air heavy, heavy she could remember the air behind it gasping sighing hiccupping and the voice screaming, screaming, shouting hollering pushing out oh Bubblegum. Her masterpiece. Her perfect perfectly infuriating masterpiece showing her hard lined soft face in the dark dungeon where she illuminated the mysteries and illuminated more mysteries than she would ever solve and her mind wandering, wandering, wandering lost and found and seeking.

Eyes so, so telling and never telling enough and too telling and secrets kept and misplaced growing and shrinking and flashing with sadness and happiness and anger, anger so much misplaced hatred and love and love lost and trust and distrust and all too many things to write and quantify and calculate and Bubblegum could just rip at the seams and the trappings of her mind would fall out on the floor too bee seen and studied and quantified in turn. Science. Science. Science.

Her masterpiece, picture perfect in supreme functionality and readability and that maddening aloofness with the concision of one who knows what they want and how to get it. Function. How was she functioning? Bubblegum thought it best to check, to study, notate, quantify the unquantifiable feelings and emotions and thoughts and pulls and tugs and slack and sadness, happiness, sadness. Physically sound. Receptors working appropriately. Horribly wonderfully awfully unreadable as always as ever bad science bad subject bad study pleasurable experiments. That tongue long and electric and cool and hot and ever, ever, ever growing long, long thin and strong and agile and mobile and pleasure feelings bad science.

Bubblegum asked simple questions. They had taken from the blood sucker red sucker soul sucker music, music, abducted the music from her fingers and taken, taken, they steal like thieves from self, self and they stole took ripped a piece a bit a part of a person they didn't enjoy or like or love or appreciate robbers, robbers Marceline was perfection and must not be altered or changed and perfection again an achievement musical prowess additive to overall desirability vulnerability culture and knowledge and brain function it's good for the unsettled mind and crazed soul and they take, take, take. Sadness and pressure and overbearing anguish and loss of mind heart self feeling choice goodness badness purity shadows thoughts wandering, wandering, lost, lost, and lost. Appeasing. She hated loved being appeasing perfect lovely beautiful demure sickening nauseating disgusting self loathing princess.

Weight, weight too much heavy unyielding thoughts feelings soul heart insides feelings and bad awful horrid science not a subject bad scientist must remain pure, pure untainted objective inhuman functionality test, test, study write notate journal pen and her newest project so pretty. Unstable hot young childish imbalanced stolen with a temper to boot. Not at all her masterpiece. Heart on the sleeve and thoughts flying, flying loud so noisy as to burn up all comprehensive thought for the sake of sound and anger and lack of focus and bad subject for skewed weird odd wrong reasons.

Not right good warm reasons like aloofness and silken words and charm and suave and smooth and loving and caring and soft touches hushed words and light laughter and music composition songs and joy and sweetness and sunshine and all the good and bright and happy hurting, hurting, memories of happy pain and pain and weight and it crushes, crushes, crushes, crushes, crushes, distraction required.

"Why are you here, Marceline?" Safe good curious question appropriate and quantifiable answer straight forward good latch onto good solid answer that will be given.

"I…I'm here to kill you, Bonnibel."

Princess Bubblegum can remember the exact moment her life changed.


End file.
